


time for what i've lost to come back to me

by theformerone



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Past Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 21:40:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14656782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: Shikamaru sees it because he is an analyst. Neji sees it because he has lived it.Sakura returns from a mission, and she does not come back to their bed for a year.





	time for what i've lost to come back to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amako](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amako/gifts).



> this is another fic for the ShikaSakuNeji gift exchange! this one is for amako who wanted all the angst in the world, with sakura returning from a honeypot mission gone awfully wrong and shikamaru and neji trying to figure out how to cope with her new trauma
> 
> i hope you like it!

She comes back, and she won't sleep in the same bed as them.

That in and of itself is not a cause for alarm. They all keep separate places in the Jounin Barracks for that precise reason. They need time to decompress after coming home from a mission, time that it sometimes safer spent on one's own than with each other.

When they arrive back home, they expose their throats to each other to tell them if they are still shaky from their mission. That, or they will immediately slide back into the fold to signal that all is well.

There are enough horror stories of shinobi turning on their loved ones after immediately returning home for them to understand the necessity of such an arrangement. 

So they are patient. They wait for her. Usually, she only takes three days. Her longest was two weeks, and that had been after the war. 

Now, it has been a month.

They don't push, because they know that whatever her reasons are, they are good. Sakura has never been the type to force herself to heal too soon; Tsunade knocked that impulse out of her head with her first lessons. The medic must always be the last to die. 

They give her the space to lick her wounds in peace. 

After two months of silence, they look to each other and they start to worry.

* * *

"You do know that _legally_ speaking, I can't tell you anything."

Neji lifts an eyebrow at the Rokudaime, and at Naruto seated nearby his former jounin sensei. 

"Naruto literally disobeyed direct orders every day for three years and neither you or the Godaime or really anyone seemed to have a problem with that," Shikamaru says around his cigarette.

"Isn't your whole schtick about breaking the rules when it comes to the people you care about?" Neji asks.

They snipe together so that they can provide a united front. Kakashi looks as bored as a Nara does, arms folded across his chest as he leans back into his chair. Naruto's face is pinched, like he's caught between feeling chastised and oddly entitled to the rule breaking sprees of his youth.

"Besides," Shikamaru huffs, "you don't have to tell us anything. We're legally her spouses. We have a measure of access to her recent mission records."

"Only the ones that she wants you to see," Kakashi replies.

"And," Naruto pipes up, "the ones you're allowed to have clearance for."

Both Shikamaru and Neji look at him at the same time.

"How'd the Chuunin Exams go, Naruto?" Neji asks, temper starting to flare. "I seem to recall you having to pull your most powerful technique from your repertoire because otherwise you would have been a threat to the other participants."

He can feel where Shikamaru's shadow has nudged against his own, a silent suggestion that he calm down. When they were wed, Neji and Sakura had learned shadow-sense in the Nara forests from their husband. Neji slides his foot to the left, shoving at Shikamaru's presence. 

"The Chuunin Exams were years ago, Neji," Naruto says, voice still bright despite the clear displeasure that comes to any shinobi when their rank is thrown negatively in their face. "I made jounin months ago. We're all of a rank -,"

"I," Neji interrupts, "have been a jounin since I was  _fourteen_. I am the sitting commander of Konohagakure's Jounin Forces. The only person in this room that outranks me in terms of time and official active duty experience is the Rokudaime."

Shikamaru's shadow nudges his again, but slightly more insistent. It isn't the Shadow Imitation technique, no, not yet. He'll probably only do that if Neji says something treasonous. Like he's thinking about doing right now.

"Meaning my clearance level has been above yours for _seven_ years now," he says, arms folded across his chest. "Now despite the rampant nepotism that has placed you, a shinobi well known for flying the coop and disobeying orders since your  _genin days_  is now in a position of incredible socio-political power despite the fact that you've been emotionally involved with a war criminal since we were _twelve_ , I find it almost endearing that you would ever consider  _rank_ would be something that would stop me from seeing to the health and wellbeing of my  _wife."_

"Nara-kun," the Rokudaime says, smiling from behind his mask. It cuts right through Naruto's indignation, stomping on his student's words before he gets the chance to retaliate. "I didn't peg you for the monologuing type."

Neji opens his mouth to snap something awful at Kakashi when Shikamaru's hand comes gently to the small of his back. 

"In name, she's still a Haruno, but by marriage, she's a Nara," he says, eyes narrowed. "Both of her spouses are of jounin rank with S-level clearance, and as her clan head, I have access to her files."

"Your ranking isn't the problem!" Naruto shouts, his agitation now bursting out of his mouth with the truth. "She doesn't want you to see them!"

That stops them both. 

They have secrets from each other, that's true enough. What was a shinobi without secrets? There had to be a few things, a handful of things kept from those you loved, even from those you loved most. There was danger in being totally known by someone, especially by the people you had given the rest of your life to. 

If Neji was kidnapped, tortured, and beaten by rogue shinobi that wanted the secrets of the Nara forests, he would not be able to give them to the nin even though he was the clan head's husband. If Shikamaru was forced under a mind reading jutsu, he wouldn't be able to say anything about how the Caged Bird Seal was applied to branch members of the Hyūga clan. 

But the vaguest details from missions, a date, or a period of time, or even an idea of its end goal, all of that was fair game because all of that was easily compartmentalized and protected from interrogation. They were nothing compared to the shadow arts or the fuinjutsu of the Hyūga. 

And still, Sakura did not want them to know. 

"I apologize for my brusque manner," Neji says, bowing woodenly to Kakashi and Naruto. "We will see to this family dispute privately. Thank you for your assistance."

Naruto's gaze softens, and Neji does not need his Byakugan to be active to recognize the subtle presence at the window. Naruto's own second shadow is never far behind him.

"I'm worried about her, too," he says softly. "But the only person that knows what happened is Kaka-sensei, and her therapist. She put all the information on lockdown."

Neji believes Naruto when he says, "I'm sorry."

They leave, just as confused as they were when they arrived.

* * *

They wait another month. Rumors begin to spread. The Nara are not the gossipy type, and Yoshino is too fearsome a former clan head to let them ferment on the compound anyway. She is the sitting ANBU Commander, having received a promotion when she returned to active duty during the war, and she will not let something as flimsy as words chip at her clan's station and their security. 

After four months, Neji and Shikamaru begin to worry. After four months and three weeks, Sakura comes home. 

Neji is reading the newspaper while Shikamaru cards his fingers through his hair, reading glasses low on his nose. It had been an aggravating day. Neji had to oversee a series of jounin hopeful nominations while Shikamaru had been stuck in clan council meetings all day. 

They had returned home in similar states of irritation. Neji had taken one look at Shikamaru's face and put on an old war comedy. Shikamaru looked at the tense line of Neji's shoulders and produced the day's newspaper from under his arm. 

Sakura's footsteps are silent when she enters the main house, but Shikamaru's shadow has melted into the ones on the compound, and he feels her coming before Neji does. He taps at the shell of Neji's ear, and waits while his husband expands his awareness, watches as Neji realizes that their wife has finally come home. 

When she steps into the living room, the first thing Shikamaru notices is that her hair has been cut. It's clearly an old cut, because the hair around her throat curls upwards. Her hair is much shorter than it was when she left on her mission, and she's clearly cut it since she returned home. 

He sees the way she bothers to keep herself open to the nearest exit, the front door. Her back is to the rooms deeper in the house. She is still wearing her shoes and her hands are purposely lax at her sides. 

All of it raises Shikamaru's hackles. 

They say nothing, none of them. Instead, they stare at each other for some time, the movie doing most of the talking for them. They watch each other. Sakura lets out a shuddering breath, and with a great deal of effort, turns her head away from them, exposing the line of her throat.

Neji chokes. Shikamaru's hand stops dead as it moves through Neji's hair. They don't open their mouths to ask what happened, but they know that it must be awful. 

"I don't want to look at you," she says through gritted teeth. Shikamaru sees the vein in her jaw throb, sees her shut her eyes. "I don't want to look at you until I'm sure it's you."

"Nara Neji," Neji says, "Registration number zero dash one dash two -,"

"No."

He's quiet in an instant. 

"Something real," she insists. "Something that can't be stolen."

"Temari was the first girl I ever kissed," Shikamaru offers, placing his hand in his lap. "Gaara was the first boy."

That seems to satisfy her, but she relaxes only minutely. 

"Before my father died, Hinata and I were betrothed," Neji says, following Shikamaru's lead. "My betrothal gift to her was a whalebone comb laid with pearls."

That does it again, and slowly Sakura opens her eyes. She covers her throat with her hand and looks at them, considering something. 

"I need more time," she says. 

And then, she is gone.

* * *

It goes like that, on and one for another three months. 

Sakura will come home when she knows Neji and Shikamaru will be there, and she will demand 'something real' from them before she can make herself look them in the eye. Neji can tell that Shikamaru is rapidly running out of embarrassing childhood stories to tell.

But it balances her in a way that Neji can see. Every time she comes back, she seems a little more steady. A little more assured. 

"Whatever went on out there," Shikamaru murmurs into his ear, his arm heavy on Neji's stomach, "it made her doubt who we are."

Neji rolls over in his husband's grasp and looks at him. The night is quiet, and all he can hear is Shikamaru's breathing. Sakura's side of the bed is noticeably empty, and just as cold. 

"A genjutsu," Neji says. 

Shikamaru nods, and tugs Neji a little closer. 

"It's why she's gathering information," he explains. "Things that only we or the Twelve would know. Things we've already told her about." 

"Someone got in past her defenses," Neji surmises, reaching out to stick one of his calves in between Shikamaru's. "They used one of our faces to get close to her."

Shikamaru sucks his teeth unhappily. 

"She still goes by Haruno for that exact reason," he says, unhappy. "The wedding was private."

"Nothing is private," Neji reasons. "I think it might be you. The two of you were dancing around each other during the war, I only came in a little while after."

"So someone wore my face to get to her."

"That seems the most likely."

"But what did they _do_?"

Neji swallows. He's had his own suspicions, and they have bubbled at the back of his mind for the past seven months that Sakura has lived in the jounin barracks. He hasn't wanted to voice them out loud for fear of speaking them into truth. 

"She's resistant to all kinds of torture," Shikamaru says, eyes narrowed as he tries to attack the problem. "That happened early, so early that she had Inner Sakura through her entire childhood. Ino personally trained her against psychological torture when they were apprenticed to Tsunade-sama. She's a medic; physical pain hasn't gotten to her since she was an academy student -," 

"But both," Neji says, softly interrupting. "Both inflicted at once, in a single trauma, inflicted by someone she loves. That might do it."

Shikamaru looks at him, still a little confused, the pieces not sliding into place for him as they have for Neji. 

"It happened to me a couple of times when I was solo in the field," Neji explains. "Someone would use a genjutsu to make me think they were someone else."

Shikamaru's eyes widen a fraction, and Neji can feel it the moment his husband starts to hold his breath. 

Neji's solo field time had been marked by two and a half years of solo honeypot missions. His distinctive eyes were fixed with a pair of contact lenses with artificial pupils, and his hair was left loose around his shoulders. His Byakugan could assure to him that his target was in place, and could tell him exactly where and when he could strike. 

He had assassinated over sixty people in his fuck spree across the Elemental Nations. His bodycount was a number known only by the Godaime, the Rokudaime, and his spouses. 

"They raped you?"

Neji nods. 

"I had specific training for it, because it was bound to happen eventually," he replies. "Nearly the whole world knew that I was in love with Naruto when we were kids because of the Chuunin Exams, and everyone knows the Toad Sage frequented brothels. So it wasn't difficult for many people to put two and two together." 

That isn't something that Neji has told Shikamaru, and it shows in the horrified expression on his husband's face. 

"I was trained for it," Neji insists. "I was prepared. I handled it."

"And you think Sakura - ?"

"I don't know of anything else that would make her act this way." 

Shikamaru closes his eyes and takes a few slow, deep breaths. Neji can see the moment the rage kicks in, rage at Sakura's attackers, rage at the Rokudaime for sending his married student on a mission of this nature, rage at himself for not figuring it out sooner. 

Neji burrows in closer to his husband, pulls the two of them closer until they are flush against one another. 

"She needs more time," he says. "She's meeting with her counselor about it, that much is clear from the way she's behaving. She'll come to us when she's ready."

Shikamaru holds onto Neji with strength to marvel their wife's. He holds onto Neji that way the entire night.

* * *

It takes a year. But when she finally comes back, she is sitting on their pristinely made bed. Her shoes are still on, signaling her continued fear, and her preparedness to run at a moment's notice. 

Shikamaru stands in the doorway, with Neji just behind him. He had gotten home and made a beeline for their bedroom, keen on taking a nap. 

"Wait," Neji had said, reaching out to grab Shikamaru's wrist. "She's here. Let me come with you."

So Neji stood, and they went together. 

She is sitting on their bed, still armed, with her throat exposed to let them know that she is still unsettled. Still rattled. But she is trying. 

"My parents would have named me Shikari if I were a girl," he says. 

She blinks open one green eye, fists bunching in the sheets on their bed. 

"My mother wanted me to be called Houta when I married into the main branch," Neji adds. 

She closes her eyes and takes a slow breath. They wait one hour, and then another one, not moving from where they stand in the doorway. 

"She used a genjutsu," she whispers. "She looked like Shikamaru. Talked like him. Walked like him. She did a hell of a lot of research. It was a good impersonation. She fooled me."

He wants to run into the room, to take her face in his hands and assure her that he is her husband. Neji's hand around his wrist stops him. Sakura takes in and releases a shuddering breath. 

"She didn't have the tattoo," she says with a mean chuckle. "Despite all her research, she still didn't get that right."

Shikamaru's hand flies up to his chest, to his sternum, where the Hyūga flame is tattooed within the space the Haruno circle outlines. Neji has the interlocking shadows of the Nara clan tattooed within the Haruno circle on his upper back, directly below his blind spot. Sakura has the Hyūga flame above the Nara shadows, as if one is feeding the other, on her clavicle, directly below her Byakugō. 

The marks are always covered, hidden from view for this exact reason. They are the one way the three of them can always recognize each other. Shikamaru had never thought that one day, there would be a definitive necessity for the marks. At the time, they were Sakura's suggestion on their wedding night, a way to commemorate their bond without wearing rings. 

Now, he is grateful that she had the idea in the first place. 

"When I didn't see it, I dispelled the illusion and I killed her," she continues. "Picked up a nice bounty for bringing her head back to the village." 

Shikamaru wants to scream. 

"A year," Sakura says, shuddering as she does it. "A year is a long time. And I want to kick this. And I need your help to do it." 

He nods in the doorway. Neji holds fast to his wrist. 

"Neji," she says, aware that all of the power in the room is firmly in her hands. "Disarm him." 

He does so. Shikamaru readily disarms himself when he arrives home; his weapons pouches are usually discarded by the time he reaches the kotatsu. He has a pair of trench knives on him, and an array of senbon hidden in his sleeves. Neji removes them all slowly, showing Sakura what he has retrieved before he places it on the ground. 

"Come here," she says. 

Shikamaru stays where he is, and Neji approaches Sakura. He stays a respectful distance away, probably giving her more space than she would have asked for. 

"Show me." 

Neji takes off his shirt without another word. It pools in a swath of light blue fabric on the ground, and he turns around, dropping to his knees as he does. It's an incredibly vulnerable position; it places Sakura squarely in his blind spot. But she relaxes when she sees the tattoo. 

"Kai."

She pulses her chakra, and with it a small wave of killing intent. There is no illusion to release. She raises her hand to let it rest gently on top of Neji's tattoo. He is still as she does. 

She traces its shape before she places a hand on Neji's shoulder, her clear fingernails digging a bit into his flesh. She sighs. 

"Okay," she breathes. "Okay."

She looks up at Shikamaru, who has not moved since Neji disarmed him. 

"Show me yours." 

He obliges her. Neji had already removed his flak jacket, so all Shikamaru has to do is take off his long sleeved black shirt. He doesn't make another move once it's gone. Sakura stares at his chest for a long time, as if she is trying to convince herself that this, too, is real. 

"Kai." 

She says it seven times, total. Each repetition grates on Shikamaru's heart. 

"Come here."

He follows the instruction. He kneels in front of her, taking Neji's place. Their husband has already moved over so that he is sitting just in front of Sakura, a little bit between her and Shikamaru, to intervene if necessary. 

Sakura reaches out, and she places her fingers on the tattoo at Shikamaru's sternum. She feels along the slightly raised skin, the familiar black mark, and she looks up at him. Her green eyes are cold, but desperately seeking familiarity. 

"Kai." 

She snatches her hand back to herself before promptly breaking her pinky finger. She doesn't so much as wince at the pain. She keeps her eyes wide open, the hurt of the wound convincing her that she is settled in the real world. She heals the break with her usual calm efficiency. 

When that is over, she raises her head to them and says, "I want the two of you to touch me."

Shikamaru swallows hard. Neji tenses just between them. 

"Shikamaru first."

His mouth goes dry. 

"Sakura," Neji says, "maybe I should instead -,"

"No," she insists. "Shikamaru. Touch me."

He lifts his hand so slowly an academy teacher would say he's not fit for active duty. Then, carefully,  _carefully_ , he places it on her foot. She breathes. She swallows thickly. 

"Neji," she says. 

Neji mimics Shikamaru, but he puts his hand over hers, balled together in her lap. They don't move for what feels like hours. 

The light of day flickers by outside their window, and before Shikamaru can count the passing clouds, night has fallen. The Nara compound is awash with night and its shadows, and he has not moved except to breathe since Sakura told him to touch her. 

His internal clock tells him they must have been there for four, maybe five hours, when she leans back and lies down on the bed. 

"Come up here," she says, voice shaky. 

Neji takes her left, and Shikamaru takes her right, like they always do when she's in the middle. She is not trembling, but there is an unsteadiness in her hands that is only hidden by the fact that she is holding them together. 

"You can't touch my hair anymore," she says, voice getting thick from the tears that are welling up in her eyes. "She pulled on it. She tugged my hair kind of like you did and I - I  _liked it_ , god -," 

"Okay," Neji replies. "We won't touch your hair."

He moves slowly, carefully bringing one hand onto her arm. He moves with the upmost care, drawing Sakura onto her side, and then getting closer until his chest is flush against her back. It makes her relax somewhat, stills her trembling hands, having the pressure of Neji's chest as a solid force behind her. 

But her gaze is still misty when she looks at Shikamaru. Still guilty. Still horribly upset. 

"I liked it," she says, on the verge of babbling as she cries. "I  _liked_ it, I thought it was you, I swear. She tricked me, she did. She looked just like you before we were naked and she - from behind, I couldn't see her chest, I couldn't tell it wasn't you, I couldn't tell, I swear. I  _swear_ Shikamaru, I didn't know."

He reaches for her trembling hands, takes them in his own. He stays further away until she tugs at him, pulling him closer. 

"I believe you," he says, trying to fight back his own tears. His face feels hot with the weight of them, with the sheer hurt of seeing his wife in such a state.

He's grateful for Neji's calm, his instinctive understanding of what she needs right now. He's been more help to their wife now than Shikamaru has been the entire year Sakura has been coping with the weight of this on her own.

"I know you're telling the truth," Shikamaru says. "I believe you."

She wrenches one of her hands out of his grip to press forward at the tattoo on his sternum. Shikamaru winces, but otherwise does nothing. The weight of her fingers against his chest nearly makes him wonder if she's going to impale him, just to be sure that he's the real one, the  _right_ one. 

When she presses their mouths together, it results in an inelegant kiss. They're both crying now, at least a little bit, and their teeth clack together when Sakura pushes. She doesn't move her fingers from his tattoo, and Shikamaru doesn't stop holding her hand. 

She pulls back, her eyes bloodshot as she waits for something, what Shikamaru can't say. 

"Take it easy," Neji says, rubbing a soothing circle onto her hip. "We've waited a year. We can wait longer. Don't force it."

"I want to," she says, reckless and agitated. 

And it hurts to see her like this, turning her own stubbornness, that ridiculous taste for destruction that every member of Team Seven had, seeing her turn her brightness into an instrument that would hurt her rather than help her progress. 

Shikamaru looks over her shoulder and at Neji. They both know that if she pushes too hard here, all the progress she has made on her own for the last year may be forfeit. 

"Slow down," Neji says softly. "You don't have to rush. Slow down."

He sees it, sees the exact moment where her desperation meets her grief, watches her hit the wall, and crumple from the impact. She sobs, ugly, awful sobs that shake her. Neji holds her tighter, and Shikamaru moves in closer, wrapping his arm around the both of them until Sakura is caged between the two of them. 

"We waited a year for this much," Shikamaru murmurs, his lips brushing against her forehead as he speaks. "We waited for you and you came back."

Sakura's arm is squished almost completely between them, but she does not move it; she keeps her fingers on his tattoo, shaking as she weeps.

"We can wait another year for the rest," he says, "two more years, three, the rest of our lives if we have to. We can wait for as long as you need us to."

**Author's Note:**

> mako, i'll be honest, i had a v hard time figuring out whether or not this fic should end with an indescribably tender vanilla sex scene or if it shouldn't. so i'll leave it up to you, dealer's choice. if you want it, i'll write it, one because you want it, and two, to apologize for the twelve years i made you wait for this fic. 
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
